Tag: World Wrestling Entertainment

Oklahoma’s Caleb Kelly to get WWE tryout during Wrestlemania week

Former linebacker and S.O.U.L. Mission coordinator Caleb Kelly to participate in WWE tryout during Wrestlemania week, according to ESPN.

It’s Wrestlemania week for the WWE. As has become commonplace in recent years, the biggest pro wrestling brand in the world has hosted a tryout during the biggest week in the industry for athletes across the disciplines at the collegiate level.

According to ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, former Oklahoma linebacker and current Director of S.O.U.L. Mission Career and Professional Development Caleb Kelly will be among the participants at this week’s tryout.

The football contingent trying out includes ex-Oklahoma linebacker Caleb Kelly, an ESPN top-70 national recruit who started portions of three seasons before being limited by knee injuries late in his career. – Rittenberg, ESPN

Kelly, a former five-star player out of Clovis West High, has been a fan favorite during his time with the Sooners. His joyful personality and his charisma made him one of the more beloved players of the Lincoln Riley era among fans and media members. Though he dealt with injuries in his playing days, he had a penchant for big plays for the Sooners.

Like this one in the fourth quarter of the 2021 Red River Showdown that helped the Oklahoma Sooners overcome their huge first-half deficit to beat the Longhorns.

Many WWE legends started on the gridiron before making the transition to the ring. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a star at Miami, and Bill Goldberg played for the Georgia Bulldogs. Current Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns played his college ball at Georgia Tech.

As a player and coach, Kelly displayed some of the intangible traits that will allow him to excel in the WWE. Namely his electric presence and ability on the microphone, not to mention his incredible athleticism.

Though he’d more than likely have to go through the WWE’s developmental program, he has all of the tools in his box to make an exceptional pro wrestler.

Check out some of the best photos from Caleb Kelly’s time with the Oklahoma Sooners!

WWE’s reported talks to legalize betting on scripted matches is the dumbest idea ever

This just doesn’t sound like a very good idea.

For as much as people like to joke about sports being rigged and games following a pre-determined script, the truth is it would be almost impossible to get every necessary participant on the same page to make that realistic — and get everyone involved to shut up about it.

That’s why it’s so enticing to bet on sports. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, not even the people involved.

Leagues go hard to protect that perception. The NFL didn’t suspend Calvin Ridley an entire year simply for betting on his own team to win a game. That heavy-handed punishment was a message to everybody else.

Pro wrestling, though, is a sport that never has to worry about match-fixing because, well, that’s kind of the point. Every result is pre-determined, which is precisely why the WWE’s reported interest in allowing betting is so ridiculous. More than a few people will have an advantage.

According to a CNBC report, WWE is in talks with state gambling regulators in Colorado and Michigan to legalize betting on high-profile matches, citing the Academy Awards as a template for why it could work. The thought is that since awards are known by a select few people before they’re publicly announced and people are allowed to bet on those winners, the same can be done for WWE matches. WWE is even working with the same accounting firm as the Oscars to make sure scripted match results remain a secret, according to the report.

It sounds like the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.

Colorado and Michigan are two of just a handful of states to even allow betting on the Oscars — and those results aren’t scripted (that we know of). WWE consumers wouldn’t necessarily be at a larger risk than other bettors, but the problem is the unfair advantages that would potentially exist. I’d be surprised if WWE finds many states willing to assume that risk. Better yet, I’d be surprised if many sportsbooks are willing to offer odds on a market that could be manipulated so easily.

Even in the likelihood that WWE employees are prohibited from placing bets like they are in other leagues, what would stop people in the know from passing information on to someone else? I don’t care how secure the results of a wrestling match are. Too many people have a hand in the outcome — executives, writers, wrestlers, referees — to expect information not to leak.

It all sounds sketchy to me.

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Bob Arum: All fighters could train in one, controlled environment

Bob Arum told ESPN that he and his team are considering small cards and having Top Rank fighters train in a controlled environment.

Promoter Bob Arum is trying to find ways to get the boxing gears turning again amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A few days ago, he raised the possibility of staging fights at World Wrestling Entertainment facilities in Florida after Gov. Ron DeSantis declared WWE events – without spectators – essential business.

On Wednesday, Arum told ESPN that he and his team are considering small cards and having Top Rank fighters train in a controlled environment. Arum has his own gym in Las Vegas.

“What we’re doing is looking at facilities, including our gym, where the guys would have to train,” he said. “You can’t have them in these old gyms because they can pick up the virus that way. But if you clean your gyms and you just let a limited number of people in to train, and then you bring everybody to the location, put them up in a hotel and keep testing them, you can get it done.

“We would sanitize the Top Rank gym, limit the availability to those in the program and bring everybody into Vegas. If the hotels aren’t open, rent them a facility to live in and get them ready when we do open up and we do the events with the testing and so forth, whether it’s in California, Nevada, Texas or Florida, any of those places. So we’re working on all of that, but again, it’s a work in progress because we’re flying blind.”

ESPN reported that the UFC Apex Centre in Las Vegas is another possible venue for boxing. Top Rank President Todd duBoef has been in contact with UFC officials.

“We really have to look at what the leadership of those states are going to be doing in terms of opening up and getting back to easing up the ‘stay at home’ orders and then opening up the states for business, in general,” duBoef said.

“So I think you’ve got to look at the ‘hot’ states and assume they’re not going to be open for a while: New York, New Jersey, possibly California. Some of those hot states will probably take a longer period of time. But once states that are more amenable to hosting events are identified, we hone in on the leadership and the jurisdiction of them, then we can hone in on facilities, specifically.”

Added Arum: “We don’t have the expertise, nobody has expertise to see how this is going to work. We have to take a lot of cues from entities that are better financed than we are and involved at the cutting edge, like the NBA, the NFL, and they would use our program, almost like a laboratory for them when they do roll out.”

Could designation of WWE as essential business in Florida open door for boxing?

Bob Arum is looking into the possibility of staging boxing cards in Florida after the WWE was declared essential business.

Could Florida be the state in which boxing makes its comeback?

Promoter Bob Arum told ESPN that he’s looking into the possibility of staging boxing cards there after Gov. Ron DeSantis described World Wrestling Entertainment in a memo as essential business in Florida during the coronavirus pandemic.

WWE officials reportedly are considering their training facility in Orlando and the private Full Sail University in Winter Park as possible sites for events.

Arum said DeSantis’ announcement could open the door to combat sports events. He added that he planned to reach out to WWE officials.

“It’s very, very interesting, and we’re going to be in touch with them. There’s a possibility to use their facility to maybe do events without a crowd,” Arum said Tuesday.

He went on: “We’re very close with Vince [McMahon] and the WWE. So let’s see, but we’re still not talking before June.”

Arum told ESPN that there is a strong possibility that events will be held without live audiences, at least as the sport begins to rebuild. And he suggested that big events will have to wait until it’s safe to have spectators.

“But it all depends, the whole reopening of the country, the different states, it all comes down to the same thing — testing, adequate testing,” he said. “You cannot open it and have athletes compete against each other with referees, the judges, with camera people, unless you can ensure that it’s safe. And the only way you can ensure that it’s safe is with testing. It comes down to testing.”

And as for the big events: “Those are either going to have to wait until you have spectators, or if the fighters get antsy, they will have to deal with an adjustment in their purses because you will have cut off an important revenue source from the event.

“For example, [Tyson] Fury and [Deontay] Wilder, the gate was close to $17 million. And that’s from the public buying tickets to the fight. How do you replace that? Well, if you don’t replace it, then somebody has to eat that.”
The third Fury-Wilder fight has been pushed back to the fall.

“I’m very optimistic that we’ll be doing events for audiences in the last three months of the year,” Arum said. “Do I know for sure? No. But that’s in my mind how I’m calculating it.”

Tyson Fury has wrestling in his future regardless of Feb. 22 outcome

Tyson Fury confirmed that he plans to be back on the WWE stage, saying, first and foremost, he’s an entertainer.

Deontay Wilder jokes that he’s glad Tyson Fury has another job in pro wrestling. Fury will need the gig, says Wilder, who has promised to knock him out in their heavyweight rematch

Turns out, it’s not exactly a joke, at least not to the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment).

The WWE wants Fury back for an encore, no matter what happens on Feb. 22 on Fox/ESPN+ pay-per-view.

“The entertainment side of it, that showmanship side of him, is in front,’’ WWE executive Paul Michael Levesque, better-known as Triple H, told the U.K.’s Metro.

“So I think he would love to do something more with us. He’d love to do a bigger thing. I think he understands the entertainment value. This is not — for him — about: ‘I need to be the champion, or I need to be this or that.’ ‘’

Fury had a role in the WWE’s Halloween show in Saudi Arabia In October. Levesque said he would like to have him back under the big top in Tampa on April 5.

Fury confirmed that he plans to be back on the WWE stage. He says he enjoys the showmanship. First and foremost, he says, he’s an entertainer.

“They (WWE) didn’t pick him, because he sucks,’’ Fury said of Wilder during a news conference Monday in Los Angeles. “They picked me.’’